City of Vengeance
by PrincessDaydream77
Summary: Set after the end of City of Heavenly Fire. As the Mortal War finally comes to an end, the citizens of Idris are left to try and piece together their broken lives. But even as they celebrate their victory, a dark force is lurking in the darkness, plotting her revenge against the woman who took everything she had; Jocelyn Graymark.
1. Memories of Times Gone By

City of Vengeance

Summary: Set after the end of City of Heavenly Fire. As the Mortal War finally comes to an end, the citizens of Idris are left to try and piece together their broken lives. But even as they celebrate their victory, a dark force is lurking in the darkness, plotting her revenge against the woman who took everything she had; Jocelyn Graymark.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything apart from my story idea and any OC characters that may appear in it. All the rest belongs to Cassie Clare.

Chapter One

The sparks from the fireworks rained down against the blackness of the night sky, filling the darkness with bursts of light in every colour imaginable. On the ground, crowds of people dressed all in crimson and gold spun and danced in the moonlight, laughing and smiling, as if the events of the past year had been nothing but a bad dream, and now they had awoken.

However, one of the most prominent people in the celebration was thousands of miles away, having slipped away when no one was looking. She had not wanted to disrupt the party when everyone had been having such fun; after all, happiness had been scarce during the war, when the only emotions had been guilt, loss and sorrow.

Those were the emotions that passed over Jocelyn as she knelt in the charred remains of Fairchild Manor, the place she had once called her home. She was a very different woman now from the one she had been then, now a Graymark more than a Fairchild, far more than a Morgenstern, yet somehow, the darkened rubble still sent a shiver down her spine.

The wind was only a gentle breeze, but on it were carried ghosts. The ghosts of her mother and father, who had warned her against marrying so young, burnt to ashes in a fit of rage and madness. The ghost of Valentine Morgenstern, the first man Jocelyn had truly loved, who could not take that feeling away from her, even after all he had done. But most of all, she felt the ghost of Jonathan, _her _Jonathan, the boy she had cried over each year on his birthday, who had been stolen from her when he was born and then returned two decades later only to be taken again. All people that she had loved and lost. All gone now.

Gently, Jocelyn placed down her offering in the spot which had used to be the front doorstep; a bouquet of flowers, red and white and gold, the same flowers she had carried down the aisle to meet Luke. The ceremony had been beautiful, truly the happiest moment of her life, Clary's birth aside, and it had felt only right for the woman to share her joy with those she loved.

The remains of the manor were surrounded by forest, silent in the moonlight. No crickets chirped, no owls hooted and even the wind was silent for a while. The only sound was the steady breathing of the redhead, as she blinked tears back from her eyes.

The silence was broken eventually, and Jocelyn, immersed in the past, was drawn back to the future by the very voice that represented her new life.

"Room for one more?"

She turned her head over her shoulder to see Luke standing a few feet away, his tie and jacket abandoned, with his hands in the pockets of his smart dove grey trousers. He was doing his best to appear nonchalant, but Jocelyn could see the stiffness in his shoulders, the controlled angle of his hips as he leant to one side. Most of all, she could see his eyes, razor sharp through the darkness, filled with pity and loss.

"I just wanted some time alone, to think." she told him, realising that she had offered no explanation for her disappearance at her own wedding, to another continent, no less. Still, he had found her. Jocelyn thought back to their games of hide-and-seek in childhood, to New York, to the Institute and the dungeons in Edom. '_He always finds me.'_

"I'll leave you for a while, then." Luke had already begun to turn, but Jocelyn, the faster of the two, had already risen and placed a hand on his arm, clinging desperately to the fabric of his shirt.

"No, please, you can stay." Her voice was filled with pleading, more than her pride thought appropriate. Eventually, she spoke the words that filled the silence. "I want you to stay."

_I need you to stay._ Those were the words that remained unspoken, but they were not needed. Luke knew her well, better than she knew herself. He knelt down on the doorstep at her side, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her close to him. Jocelyn rested her head on his chest, relishing the feeling. There were times when she still could not believe he was hers, even after all this time.

Silence fell once again, but this time, the absence of sound was comforting. The newly-weds stayed in their embrace, lost in their memories of the past, the childhoods spent playing at the manor house, the Circle, the Uprising and the wars that came after it. They remembered all they had been through, the joy, the fear and the heartbreaking loss and the couple clasped their hands together, sharing their burden of agony.

They stayed that way for a long time, though how long neither could say; the seconds had blurred into minutes and the minutes into hours. But eventually they remembered their guests, who must have begun to wonder where they were, and their daughter, who would be frantic if she found out they had disappeared off the face of the Earth.

And so they returned to the celebration, plastering a smile onto their faces to try and hide the pain, dancing and laughing and watching the sparks of the fireworks burn and twist and die, their lights extinguished one by one, more victims to the night.

Jocelyn doubted that their efforts were convincing anyone; she caught Magnus staring at her, whispering into Tessa's ear, his cat-like eyes dulled with worry. More often than once, Clary and her friends came over to ask if she was having fun; even Simon, who had no concept of the losses she had suffered, that they had _all_ suffered. She knew that she was fooling no one; Jocelyn did not even believe herself.

But she kept up appearances, until the last guest had left and Clary had made her way up to bed. It was only when she and Luke fell into bed themselves that she finally let her mask slip away and they lay until dawn in each other's arms, mourning for all they had lost and clinging desperately to what they had left.

They did not see the danger that rose with the horizon, as another mother mourned for her lost son and plotted her revenge against the one that killed him.

A/N: This is my first Mortal Instruments story, but I finished the final book a couple of days ago and I had so many ideas buzzing around in my head that I had to share one with you. This is slightly AU, only in that the wedding took place immediately after the victory celebrations ended, not ages after (it's important for a later plot line). Please review!


	2. Going Home

Chapter Two

A/N: Thank you to Guest for being my first reviewer.

Jocelyn awoke to a silent room and an empty bed. Luke was not beside her, so she could only assume that he had gone downstairs. '_He can't have been up for long.'_ she noted, as she felt the slight warmth of his side of the bed. So she rose, throwing on a dressing gown haphazardly, before making her way downstairs.

She could hear the crackling of a fire in the living room, the pleasant warmth drifting through onto the stairs. Through the door, which was slightly ajar, she could see Luke knelt beside the fireplace, staring intently into the flames, as if they held a riddle he meant to decipher.

Jocelyn opened her mouth to speak, to ask her new husband what was wrong, but then she saw the strange flickering of the flames, the way they twisted and turned, almost as if they were letters. The woman quickly realised that they were letters; Luke was focused on the content of a fire message.

She waited silently, leant against the door frame, until the flames had died down to glowing embers. She remained in silence, approaching her husband, who was hunched over with his head in his hands, and wrapping her arms tightly around his shoulders. Luke started for a moment, before he caught sight of a lock of red hair out of the corner of his eye. Recognising his wife, he leant into her embrace.

"What's happened?" she asked after a minute or so.

Luke raised his head to look at her. His eyes were dry now, but were ringed with red, just as hers were, she expected. He answered with a sigh. "It's Maia."

Jocelyn sighed as well. Maia; another victim of the war her son had started. The loss of Jordan Kyle in the attack on the Praetor Lupis had hit the girl hard, and she was still struggling to come to terms with the loss of the boy she had loved. Having so nearly lost Luke on many occasions, as well as her first husband dead by the Angel Raziel, Jocelyn could sympathise more than most for that feeling.

"How is she coping?" Jocelyn asked gently, although she doubted the answer would be a positive one.

"Not well at all." Luke told her, his voice grave as if he were reporting Jordan's death all over again. "That was Bat who sent me the message. He says that she's finding it agonising to stay in Alicante, on the Council, knowing that Jordan and the other Praetors died for the sake of sending a message to the Clave."

A lump appeared in Jocelyn's throat, as she saw the way the conversation was turning.

"I'm sorry, Jocelyn," Luke apologised, seeing her expression, and knowing that she had guessed what would happen next. "But Maia is a vulnerable girl, not much older than Clary. I can't just leave her like this. I'm going to have to go back to Idris."

The woman had not noticed the way her husband was speaking, but she noticed it now, and fire rose in her eyes. "_You_ are not going anywhere." she told him sharply, the same way she had used to speak to Clary when she had caught her stealing sweets from the cupboard. "Either we all go to Idris, or none of us do."

"But you couldn't wait to leave Idris in the end." he protested, placing a hand on his wife's shoulder. The reason for that remained unspoken; it did not need to be said. "And what about Clary? Simon's just starting to remember; surely she should stick around to try to help him."

"Simon has Isabelle, Alec, Magnus and Jace to help him remember, and in any case, Clary's quite adept at drawing Portals, whether I want her to or not." The last bit was added under the woman's breath, but Luke still caught it and smiled. "We have to stay together, Luke. After all that's happened, I don't want to see my family split apart again."

Immediately, Luke's hand retracted from her shoulder, to be replaced with his warm arms wrapped around her, holding her tightly to him. Normally, Jocelyn would be a little annoyed, having been comforted all through the evening by Luke and now having the gesture repeated in the morning; she had always been strong and self-reliant, had had to be, and she hated feeling as if she was weak. But it was clear in the tight lock of his arms that Luke was clinging to her far more than she was clinging to him. '_He needs me.'_ she remembered, and held him tighter.

Half an hour later, they were upstairs packing their bags. There had not been much to pack, given that they were only at the cottage for a honeymoon, but it still felt strange to be leaving so soon. Jocelyn's ear was still ringing from the screaming match she had had with her daughter on the phone, but the promise that she could go off to see her friends whenever she liked as long as she told them first had finally persuaded Clary to say yes. She would be meeting them at dusk in Alicante, as Luke had sent a fire message to say to expect a Portal both from New York and from the farm; Jocelyn twirled the stele in her hand absent-mindedly, glad that her daughter had passed on the skill of Portal-making to her as well, to put both their minds at rest, in case any danger reared its head again. Jocelyn hoped that it would not, that the War was over; but to be truthful, she had hoped the War had ended with the Uprising, and another one, a worse one, had merely taken its place.

"All ready?" Luke asked, placing both their fully-packed bags on the floor beside a large space on the wall. Jocelyn nodded, taking a deep breath to steady her shaking hand and pressing her stele into the paint and plaster, carving a charcoal line in the shape of a doorway. The moment her stele reached the skirting board again, the space inside the line glowed blue and seemed to turn to shimmering water, almost celestial in the way it glowed. The woman smiled at her handiwork, committing its beauty to memory; she must remember to draw it later.

Still, smiling, she took her husband's hand in her own, casting a final glance over her shoulder at the farmhouse, where so many happy memories had been made. Then she turned, staring straight through the layer of rippling ice and imagining beyond it the shimmering glass towers of the place she had once called home.

A/N: Please review!


	3. Back to the Beginning

Chapter Three

A/N: Thank you to Alicia Mirza for reviewing the last chapter.

Despite the anguish the Mortal War had unleashed on the city of Alicante, it still managed to seem as serene and breathtaking as it was the first time Jocelyn came here, when she had started training at the Academy at the age of twelve. The crystal towers glowed a thousand shades of gold as the sun gave its final burst of light before retreating and Jocelyn knew that they would turn from vibrant fire to stunning ice when the moon rose to take its place. There was something magical about Alicante that she had always loved, and yet there was something dark lingering here that she had fled across the continents to escape.

'_That darkness was my doing as much as Valentine's.'_ she told herself, and suddenly her mind went blank with shock. Since the War had ended, she had forbidden herself from thinking of her demonic son, Jonathan. Each time she did, all she could see was the vibrant green of his eyes staring back at her as he lay in her arms, and the glaze that covered them once he had breathed his last. Once again, guilt overwhelmed her. She had passed over the chance of attending the boy's funeral and now was beginning to regret not taking the time to let go of him properly, as fiend and firstborn both. Perhaps if she had done, she would feel less like a demon herself.

"Jocelyn?" asked Luke, cutting through his wife's thoughts. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." Never one to admit to her weaknesses, the lie slipped easily from Jocelyn's lips, like the well-rehearsed lines of a play. _All the world's a stage_, she vaguely recalled a Mundane playwright saying, an insightful observation for someone who had a whole world hidden from their eyes. However, it was not so insightful for her to assume that Luke did not know her well enough to tell the difference between fact and falsehood. A simple look was enough to tell her he did not believe a word she was saying.

"It's not easy for any of us to come back here, after all that's happened." Luke began, taking one of her hands in his, but still looking out across the landscape of the glistening city. "But Idris is our natural home, Jocelyn. We were born here, we grew up here, we've spent over half our lives here. We can't just abandon years of good memories for the sake of a few weeks of bad ones. If we do, then we'll live in fear and regret for the rest of our lives, and nothing will ever change."

Despite the pain still left behind her eyes, Jocelyn found herself chuckling. "Spoken like a true politician."

"Well, I do need the practice." Luke commented in return, smirking in a way that reminded Jocelyn strongly of their daughter, Clary, whom he had probably taught the gesture to, for she had only begun to use it soon after he had arrived. "If I'm going to represent the interests of all werewolves, I might as well sound like a second-rate amateur poet while I do it."

Jocelyn laughed once more, clinging to the smile before it faded from her face, for she knew that such moments of happiness would be few and far between in the coming months. The Mortal War had left the Nephilim lying in a pile of rubble and almost every one knew someone who would not rise again. They were shakily pulling themselves to their feet, but one day they would stand strong once more, finally free from the threats that had plagued them for the past two decades.

The vibration of her mobile phone brought Jocelyn back into the moment, and she retrieved it from the pocket of her jeans to find a new message from Clary.

_Coming home for dinner tonight after training. Be there about seven. See you then._  
_C x_

It gave Jocelyn a little comfort to know that her daughter would be joining them in Alicante soon. Although she had learnt a great deal over the past few months about the damage she could do by trying to keep Clary close, she still liked to know what the girl was doing, to know that she was safe.

It had taken a great deal of persuading, by Luke and many others, for Jocelyn to agree to Clary training with Jace Herondale, but after having seen how much the boy truly cared for her daughter, she had acquiesced, as long as Clary came home every night and tried to stay out of trouble. Now, she found herself taking a shine to Jace, who was in fact as much like Valentine as Jonathan had been like her. '_And he makes her happy,'_ she told herself. '_That's what really matters.'_

Clary arrived at half past six that evening, with Jace in tow as usual, but Jocelyn did not mind, for she was simply glad to see her daughter safe and well. After all the time during the War she had spent worrying about her, it was enough now to have her safe in her arms every evening, even if her boyfriend was required to be with her at all times as well. _She has someone else to look out for her now_, Luke had told her when she had voiced the issue. _So do I_, she had replied, planting a kiss on his cheek.

They discussed a great number of things around the dinner table, topics of conversation appearing endlessly, as if they had not seen each other for months. They talked mainly of the repairs to Alicante, although they were treated to a few anecdotes about Magnus and Alec's new kitten, Pharoah Cleocatra I, which left the group in stitches once they reached the part about the cat all but bathing herself in glitter, much to Alec's horror and his partner's delight.

However, their happiness was short-lived, as it always seemed to be, as a knock sounded loudly on the door. Luke went to answer it, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, but on his return, his face was so grim that they could well have been tears of despair.

"A message has appeared in the rubble of the Gard." he announced to the silent room. "A message in blood."

A/N: Who wrote the message, do you think, and who for? Please review!


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